Through the neighbor’s yard
past the decomposing woodpile
where once a ruby red fox had burrowed
and given birth to three little jewels of her own
before animal control came
and yoked her away,
was a small gully
just big enough to be endless.
And after the last school bells would blare,
we’d toss our ties, scree ski down into its vessel,
and descend
all summer, every summer,
through the witch-hazeled corridors,
wearing the secrets we shared
as we slid past the brutish patrols
of wild turkeys
and down to the old stump in the clearing
where a big white cube of salt lick sat
like a tabernacle
calling all the animals in.
Then one summer, it was gone,
and on the stump, we found broken pieces
of a deer’s jaw, a mangled book of matches,
a half empty bottle of wine.
Being altar boys, we knew a little about this kind of thing:
how when small objects are positioned just right,
the seams of this world are supposed to open,
how when they do, you say amen,
how you take, eat . . . drink ye all of it, so we did—
how life lapses into myth.
This poem also appears in the July 2024 issue of U.S. Catholic (Vol. 89, No. 7, page 8). Click here to subscribe to the magazine.
